Have we? People keep telling me we’ve already discussed all kinds of stuff, and when I tell them I don’t remember, they blame the drugs that put me in the coma.

But what if it’s not the drugs? What if my brain was wrecked by the eighteen minutes that I wasn’t breathing?

‘So you think I died as well, do you?’

‘Well . . .’ Kerry picks at the nail on the ring finger of her left hand. All the other nails are short, but this one is red raw and almost down to the quick, as if she’s chosen to take all her stress out on it. ‘Only technically.’

My foot begins to shake under the bed sheet. We both watch it – Vaclav looks up from paperwork, always vigilant. After a few embarrassing seconds, the movement stops of its own accord. ‘People can’t come back from the dead, except in Stephen King books.’

‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘What was it like? Tim told me some of the details but . . . I forgot.’

Only three people saw the whole thing close up: Ant, Tim and Kerry. Ant won’t talk to me about it because it’s ‘too mental’, and if I ever see Tim again, it’ll be too bloody soon.

‘You remember playing on the Lawns that night?’ she asks, placing her hands under her legs, so she can’t inflict any more pain on her bleeding finger.

Do I – or is it a memory I’ve pieced together from other times? ‘Sure.’

‘It was nearly midnight and I . . . happened to be looking across the grass when you fell.’ She blushes again. ‘I ran over and you didn’t seem to be breathing, so Fat Matt went off to get an ambulance while I—’ She stops. ‘While I did rescue breaths to put oxygen into your blood and . . . Tim . . . did CPR because your heart had stopped beating.’

‘And broke my bloody ribs, yeah, he told me. But what made you think I was dead?’

‘There were signs.’

‘What signs? Some bloke with a tail and fire coming out of his arse trying to carry me off to hell?’ I’m shouting but I can’t seem to stop. This keeps happening.

She sighs. ‘Your eyes were blank. You made a funny noise. And the other thing is . . . you wet yourself.’

‘I pissed myself? In front of everyone?’

Kerry nods glumly. ‘It was only me that noticed. I tried to stop anyone getting close enough to see. Don’t be embarrassed, it’s just the muscles relax when someone . . .’

When someone dies. I close my eyes. The others are bastard liars. But Kerry? If Kerry says it, it has to be true.

‘We kept doing the CPR and rescue breaths till the ambulance arrived.’

‘You mean the kiss of life?’ A horrible thought occurs to me. ‘Tim did the kiss of life on me?’